Does digital literacy enhance consumers' perception of food safety risks?

The rapid advancement of digital technology has increased consumers' digital literacy and significantly altered their subjective risk perception. This article uses data from the 2017–2021 China Social Survey (CSS) to investigate the impact of digital literacy on consumers' perceptions of food safety risks and the underlying mechanisms. According to the study, digital literacy improves consumers' perceptions of food safety risks. A variety of robustness tests have supported this conclusion, and the effect is stronger among rural consumers, higher-education consumers, the income-balanced households, and those living in developed regions. The mechanism analysis results show that political trust evaluation and social trust evaluation decreased food customers' excessive risk concerns, demonstrating the mechanism effect of "amplification and attenuation" coexistence. At the same time, digital literacy promotes consumers’ willingness to participate in social governance through help-seeking behaviours, but an urban–rural digital divide in governance participation exists. We must be attentive to the governance imbalance generated by unequal digital participation capabilities.